Industrial Environmental Management. Tapas K. Das
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Figure 2.1 World's population growth over 100 years.
Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2017).
Figure 2.2 shows recent behavior of average global temperature anomaly (land and ocean combined). As can be seen in Figure 2.2, the bulk of the warming has occurred in two periods – from 1910 through 1940 and from 1980 to the present. Line plot of monthly mean global surface temperature anomaly, with the base period 1951–1980. The black line shows meteorological stations only; circles are the land–ocean temperature index, as described in Hansen et al. (2010). The land–ocean temperature index uses sea surface temperatures.
These problems are global issues which require an appropriate global response. The question of environmental protection is big issue in terms of the range of problems and issues, namely air pollution, water pollution, safe drinking water, pesticides, noise pollution, waste disposal, radio activity and waste, and conservation of forests and wild life. The list is exhaustive. Moreover, the issue in the field of environment is big in terms of the knowledge and skills required to understand a particular issue to be solved. Accordingly, it can be said that environmental issues range “from a local street corner to the stratosphere.” It is thus clear that the humanity faces overwhelming environmental problems. Law is invoked to protect humanity and our eco‐system by solving environmental problems as they strike directly at our most intimate links to the biosphere, which is a thin shell of life – only about five miles thick – covering the planet like the skin of an apple.
Figure 2.2 Earth's temperature rise since industrialization over 100 years.
Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp.graphs.
The range of environmental protection has worldwide coverage and is not confined to an isolated area or nation. The problem of environment pollution is global and concerns all countries irrespective of their size, level of development, or ideology. Notwithstanding political division of the world into national units, oceanic world is an interconnected whole and winds that blow over the countries are also one. Environment is a universal phenomenon pervading the whole world at large. If the nuclear test is carried out in one part of the world, the fall out may be carried by winds to any other part of the world and such fall out of irresponsible disposal of use radioactivity from a remote energy planet in one country may turn out to have greater adverse effect on the neighboring countries than the danger of a full‐fledged war.
2.1.1 Environmental History
Environmental history is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time. In contrast to other historical disciplines, it emphasizes the active role nature plays in influencing human affairs. Environmental historians study how humans both shape their environment and are shaped by it.
Environmental history emerged in the United States out of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and much of its impetus still stems from present‐day global environmental concerns (Chakrabarti 2006). The field was founded on conservation issues but has broadened in scope to include more general social and scientific history and may deal with cities, population, or sustainable development. As all history occurs in the natural world, environmental history tends to focus on particular time‐scales, geographic regions, or key themes. It is also a strongly multidisciplinary subject that draws widely on both the humanities and natural science.
The subject matter of environmental history can be divided into three main components (Chakrabarti 2007). The first, nature itself and its change over time, includes the physical impact of humans on the Earth's land, water, atmosphere, and biosphere. The second category, how humans use nature, includes the environmental consequences of increasing population, more effective technology, and changing patterns of production and consumption. Other key themes are the transition from nomadic hunter‐gatherer communities to settled agriculture in the Neolithic Revolution, the effects of colonial expansion and settlements, and the environmental and human consequences of the industrial and technological revolutions (Cronon 1995). Finally, environmental historians study how people think about nature – the way attitudes, beliefs, and values influence interaction with nature, especially in the form of myths, religion, and science.
2.2 Genesis of the Environmental Problem
Environmental problems have bedeviled humanity since the first person discovered fire. The earliest humans appear to have inhabited a variety of locales within a tropical and semitropical belt stretching from Ethiopia to southern Africa about 1.9 million years ago. These first humans provided for themselves by a combination of gathering food and hunting animals. Humans, for the majority of their two million years' existence, lived in this manner. The steady development and dispersion of these humans was largely due to an increase in brain size. This led to the ability to think abstractly, which was vital in the development of technology and ability to speak. This in turn led to cooperation and more elaborate social organization. The ability to use and communicate and the developed technology to overcome the hostile environment ultimately led to the expansion of these first human settlements (Ponting 1991; Sander and Theodore 2008).
By about 10 000 years ago humans had spread over every continent, living in small mobile groups. A minority of these groups lived in close harmony with the environment and did minimum damage. Evidence has been found where groups tried to conserve resources in an attempt to maintain subsistence for long periods of time. In some cases, restrictions on hunting a particular species at a time, a certain period of time of the year, or only in a certain area every few years helped to maintain population levels of certain animals (Goudie 1981). The Cree in Canada used a form of rotational hunting, only returning to an area after a considerable length of time, which allowed animal populations to recover. But the majority of these groups exploited the environment and animals inhabiting it. In Colorado, bison were often hunted by stampeding them off a cliff, ending up with about 200 corpses, most of which could not be used. On Hawaii, within a 1000 years of human settlement, 39 species of land birds had become extinct (Ponting 1991). In Australia, over the last 100 000 years, 86% of the large animals have become extinct. The large number of species lost was largely due to tendency for hunters to concentrate on one species to the exclusion of others. The main reason why these groups avoided further damage to nature was the fact that their numbers were so small that the pressure they exerted on the environment was limited.
The major shift in human evolution took place between 10 000 and 12 000 years ago. Humans learned how to domesticate animals and cultivate plants and in so doing made a transition from nomadic hunter‐gatherer to rooted agriculturist. The global population at this time was about four million people, which was about the maximum that could readily be supported by a gathering and hunting way of life (Ponting 1991). The increasing difficulty in obtaining food is believed to be a major contributor to this sudden change. The farmer changed the landscape of the planet and was far more destructive than the hunter. While farming fostered the rise of cities and civilizations, it also led to practices that denuded the land of its nutrients and water‐holding capacity. Great civilizations flourished and then disappeared as once‐fertile land, after generations of over‐farming and erosion, was transformed into barren wasteland.
However, many years later different dimensions of the problem of environmental protection and its management have taken a serious turn in the present era. This is so because humans' interaction with the natural environment is so extensive that